MediaCom Q&As: Rob Norman, GroupM

As part of a series of MediaCom interviews with some of the world’s best and brightest innovators, which can help brands enhance their social media development strategies, Ivan Fernandes, MediaCom global director, social media technology,interviews Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer, GroupM…

Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer, GroupM

Rob was appointed Chief Digital Officer in August 2012, following two years as CEO of GroupM North America. Prior to this, he ran GroupM Interaction, overseeing the operations, data processes, talent and tools essential to the media agencies’ digital tasks.

Rob lives in New York and is widely believed to be the only Englishman with a working knowledge of the infield fly rule. He is a fan of the New York Mets, the New York Jets, Tottenham Hotspur and Warren Buffett.

Key takeaways include:

• There are huge challenges ahead to stay smart – remain conscious that the dominant players are not the same in every market.
• Where the consumer goes, brands go. Business only prospers if you create message distribution and discovery strategies that yield incremental sales and margins for clients.
• Be a ‘skeptical innovator’: always encourage experimentation, but with a clear vision of what success means.
• Always ask: What environments can you use to participate in the social layer of content and what assets can you create yourself that are most likely to be kept, shared or used by your audience?
• Humans have always been social but today that sociability

For those unfamiliar with GroupM, explain what the GroupM does? If you think about the defining GroupM moments over your time with the group, what stands out?

GroupM is the parent company of Maxus, MEC, MediaCom and Mindshare as well as expert businesses in audience buying and search that collectively comprise the media investment management arm of WPP.

How and why did you get into digital marketing and GroupM? What makes GroupM different from our competitors? What are some of the more important new business strategies being deployed at GroupM?

A happy accident as a result of reading a Wall Street Journal article in early 1994 about a massive technology and content trial being planned by Time Warner Cable in Orlando Florida. Today, GroupM has more digital specialists than any other marketing services company in the world. We are fully integrated across all forms of media distribution which means that we can deal with the sellers of both media and technology across every existing and new platform. This integration is critical for our clients and for us.

What can you share about the thinking behind your new role? What are you most excited about for the future of GroupM and Social Media? How are you going to further develop the GroupM social media business?

My role is about bring experts together on two axes: first, we have to have a cross agency horizontal community that seeks and exploits opportunities for our clients and moves best practice quickly around the world. The second axis is vertical, to ensure that we don’t create artificial silos that prevent us delivering holistic communications to consumers for our clients. In social media I am really excited by the work of the Social Media Task Force and by the GroupM Next team which has seen great collaboration over the last year. I think we have a shared agenda, from training to thought leadership and tools application, that benefits everyone without compromising the distinct personalities of our agencies.

Are you seeing adoption of advanced social media services in certain markets? What are some of things you’ve learned about US social media market?

Social media is touching our business in every market. Clearly the speed of Facebook’s growth has been a big catalyst of that, but I am pleased that we don’t confuse social media with ‘how do we work with Facebook’. I believe that we are seeing our agencies look across Twitter, Tumblr, Goggle+, and the whole sharing and recommendation universe, to see how to operate those with the greatest effect – as well as using them to extract more reach and engagement from traditional media. There is no question that we have huge challenges ahead to stay smart and we have to be really conscious that the dominant players are not the same in every market. RenRen, Weibo and others in China are clear signs of that.

GroupM have a long history of digital services and ROI. Why is this important to the group and to you personally?

Where the consumer goes, brands go. Where brands go, GroupM goes. It’s as simple as that. Our business only prospers if we create message distribution and discovery strategies that yield incremental sales and margins for our clients. Over the last five years the face of our company has charged dramatically, partly reflecting and partly leading the digital evolution of marketing and media. Personally, as my grandmother always said, ‘it’s only worth getting out of bed if you have something to look forward to’ and in digital media you always have that!

How are clients looking at the larger media agencies’ role in digital and social media? Have media agencies managed to crack one of the biggest issues affecting brands today: calculating the ROI on social media?

This is our biggest challenge; many different kinds of agencies and clients themselves are laying claim to the social space. Our edge has to be in managing and measuring distribution, having the sense of what kind of creative assets are most likely to create owned media and, critically, to be THE experts in the interplay between the paid and earned opportunity. Paid media is still incredibly important and no one can compete with the big media agencies in that area.

These last few years have not been easy for social media and Facebook ROI. How has WPP approached such challenging questions?

Lots of people talk about channel neutrality. I prefer to think about informed prejudice and believe that GroupM should be a ‘skeptical innovator’, by which I mean we should always encourage experimentation, but with a clear vision of what success means. In the case of Facebook it’s like dealing with a giant toddler that gives the appearance of maturity because of its size but still has much to learn about itself.

I believe that we need to focus on advising our clients on how to achieve value from Facebook and others and how the consumer experience enhances sales or reputation. I am as certain as I can be that social media in the broadest sense will be a key part of every marketing and media strategy but that value will be created in many different ways.

How is social media technology affecting marketing landscape today? Why should brands care about their social media presence? What are the most effective means for making the most of Social Media?

I don’t necessarily agree with everything Mark Zuckerberg says but I do believe that “social by design” is a profound and important concept. It’s clear that people like to communicate, share and discover and these words are at the heart of the social concept. My own sense is that social by design relates to marketing programs but also to the media itself and that we will see a massive increase in the number of media properties that are designed with social hooks built in and at these will provide a platform for advertisers. For brands this requires sharp thinking: What environments can you use to participate in the social layer of content and what assets can you create yourself that are most likely to be kept, shared or used by your audience?

The social universe, like the real universe is, and will be, in flux for years to come and I am certain that we will see a raft of new players, applications and services. They will be important in their own right sometimes which will require very specific thinking but GroupM needs to have a wide angle on this space; for example Google+ may be way behind Facebook but we know that ‘Plus 1’ is already have a significant impact on the Google Page Rank Algorithm and search results.

Of course, for brands, there is also a wider social lens to consider and we have already seen many instances where a brands behavior and customer service can impact its perception. It’s a cliché, but bad news does travel faster than good – but when a brand does resolve important customer issues through social media the benefits can be huge.
The other wide significance issue is what social media means for mobile marketing. My own belief is that this is both the biggest challenge and opportunity. It will be significant in every way from pure reach to geo-located and time based communication.

My last thought is this: Humans have always been social but today that sociability can be observed, stimulated and acted upon. This is a huge opportunity for us.

Interview conducted by Ivan Fernandes, global director, social media technology at MediaCom Worldwide – @MediaComSMM